by Logan Ryles
That won’t happen again. I’m ready for you now, bitch.
Reed scrolled through a short list of contacts on his phone. That list had grown shorter over the past few weeks as more and more of his former friends and colleagues faded into a grey area of untrustworthiness. Prior to Oliver Enfield’s betrayal, Reed counted himself among an exclusive fraternity of elite killers, many of whom also worked for Enfield. Now, he couldn’t be sure which of them might sell him out at the first opportunity. Reed was now more limited than ever in who he could trust.
He hit the dial button and waited for the car’s Bluetooth system to take over the call. The phone rang five times before a clattering sound rang over the speakers, then a nervous voice.
“Chris! Hey. Um, my phone was on the floor. Hold on a second.”
More clattering. A dog barked in the background, and a child cried.
“Hey. Okay, I’m here now. Had to get my headphones.”
“Is that a baby?” Reed snapped.
“What? Baby? Oh, no. That’s the TV man. Got my Netflix rolling in the background. You know what I’m saying?”
Reed rolled to a stop at a traffic light and ran his hand over his forehead. He tried not to sound as frustrated as he felt. “Dillan, I hired you to conduct research, not to watch Netflix.”
“Oh, yeah, man. No worries. I work best with a little background noise.”
“Okay . . . so do you have any results yet?”
“Results. Um, let’s see here. . . .”
Each second that drained by grated on Reed’s nerves as though it were a knife digging into his spine. “Dillan, have you found her or not?”
“Um, well, no. Not strictly speaking. But I’m pretty sure she’s in the country!”
“What do you mean you’re pretty sure?”
“Oh, you’re gonna like this. So you told me what bank she uses, right? I have this buddy who works there, and I got him to run a check on her account to see if there’s any out-of-country spending. And there wasn’t. Badass, right?”
Reed slammed his hand into the console of the car. “You involved a third party? Dillan, I told you this is highly confidential!”
“No worries, bro. My dude is totally discreet. He’s also my weed dealer, so he knows how to keep things on the down low.”
“Did it ever occur to you that his computer use might be tracked? He might not be the only one who knows he checked into her accounts.”
“He said it wasn’t a problem. I’m not worried.”
Of course you’re not.
“Well, did you check to see where she is spending her money?”
“Yeah, well, I asked about that. Apparently, she took out a lot of cash in Atlanta, and nothing’s happened since. But he’s gonna check back in—”
“No. No, he’s not. I don’t want any more poking around at the bank. Banks are some of the most high-security, sensitive institutions in the world.”
“Okay, how do you want me to find her, then?”
Reed spoke through gritted teeth. “I don’t know how. That’s why I hired a private investigator. Can you get it done or not?”
Dillan sighed. “Chill out, dude. I’ll get it done. Just give me a few more days, okay? I’ll holler at ya later.”
The phone clicked off before Reed could add any further admonitions. He wrapped his fingers around the wheel and took a slow breath, forcing his tense muscles to calm. He didn’t want to hire Dillan. It was anything but an ideal situation. In years past, he would’ve made a single phone call to the legendary sleuth of the criminal underworld known only as Winter, and within twenty-four hours there would be an email in his inbox with his target’s precise location. Winter was crazy good like that, but genderless ghost wasn’t accepting Reed’s calls anymore, and hadn’t been since the events in North Carolina. That left Reed alone, blind, and without any hope of finding Banks Morccelli on his own.
He let his mind drift back to the last time he saw her, standing amid the trees next to the lake as rain washed over her pale face. Her eyes, so bright and beautiful, were strained with the pain and agony of betrayal as she stared down at the man she thought she loved. Reed stared back into the soul of the woman who held his heart in her hands, the closest thing he had to a home, and the only person he had left to hold. She didn’t say a word as she dropped the shotgun and turned into the trees, vanishing into the night and leaving him alone with the body of his former mentor lying at his feet.
In the two weeks since that night, Reed had searched all over Atlanta for Banks. It was only after days of fruitless searching that he hired Dillan, a local private investigator, to track her down. It was a desperate move, but he had to find her before anyone else did. The Wolf was still on the prowl, Oliver’s shadowy employers were still at work in the dark, and Reed was likely the only person on Earth who could protect Banks from the war he had just started.
Four
12:15 PM
Lake Santeetlah, North Carolina
Agent Matt Rollick of the FBI spent well over a decade as a homicide detective for the Los Angeles PD before making the career switch to federal investigation. During those long years, he’d seen everything from suicide by drowning to execution-style gang murder. Dozens of cases crossed his desk, and more than half of them were never solved. Blood, carnage, and the worst humanity had to offer were all par for the course during a normal day at the office.
Even after all those years, nothing could prepare him for the war zone beside the lake. By the time local law enforcement advised the FBI of a quintuple homicide outside of Lake Santeetlah, North Carolina, the bodies had long since been removed and the ashen remains of the cabin taped off, but the photographs were all there. Three males, all white, slaughtered by the river. The first was a bald man in his early sixties. A massive chunk of his lower back had been blown out by a shotgun, leaving dozens of tiny lead pellets embedded in his skin. His stomach, chest, and throat all sustained multiple knife wounds, and the left side of his face was missing, apparently also blown off by a shotgun.
Then there was the giant. A man of seven feet tall, no less than four hundred pounds, lay on the riverbank with the back of his head blown off by a shotgun. Two Georgia State policemen—state government guards assigned to the cabin—lay farther up the bank, both with their throats cut.
And finally, stretched out in the mud, by himself, with a gunshot wound to his middle back, was Senator Mitchell Holiday. His face was the only one of the three still fully intact, leaving cold white skin and the lifeless eyes of a man who died in tremendous pain.
Agent Rollick stood next to the lake and closed his eyes, trying to visualize every angle of the crime scene as it must have looked when police first arrived. Shoeprints indicated four men, possibly five. A torrential downpour had begun close to the estimated time of death for all three victims, washing away most of the tracks and prints left in the mud, and leaving investigators to piece together the rest as best they could.
Four men. One of them with a shotgun.
Local police had indeed recovered a shotgun—an expensive twelve-gauge break-action weapon, whose serial number was traced back to a purchase at an outdoors retailer in North Georgia. A few hours of research produced a bill of sale from two years prior with Mitch Holiday’s signature on it.
So the weapon belonged to Holiday, but it was difficult to believe that he used it. For one thing, there were at least two different sets of prints on the gun, and neither one of them matched the senator. Then, too, if he used the weapon, why was it found thirty feet away from his body? Also, who stabbed the bald guy?
Rollick walked back from the lake, gaining a vantage point over the crime scene where he could survey the whole area. It was a trick he learned back in LA—remove himself from the middle, gain a bird’s eye view, and use his imagination to fill in the gaps.
Assuming there were four men, that might explain why the shotgun was dumped thirty feet away from the bodies. It could also explain the multiple empty shotgun shells recovered f
arther up the hillside, near where the senator’s two bodyguards were found dead. The fourth man was armed with a shotgun, directing gunshots toward everyone but the senator.
So was this guy protecting the senator? Holiday appeared to die from some manner of a large, heavy caliber handgun or rifle fired close to his back. That explained the burned gunpowder residue that coated his shirt. Did the giant fire that weapon? If so, where was it?
“What do you think?” The voice came from behind, starling Rollick out of his muse. He turned to see Agent Liz Fido standing a few feet behind, a clipboard clamped between her petite hands. Fido had been his investigative partner for two weeks since his case involving Mitchell Holiday migrated from Atlanta and into the mountains of North Carolina, where Holiday was supposed to be under protective custody. That didn’t work out.
“I think we’re fucked. Holiday was only weeks away from testifying. Now we’ll never know what he had to say.”
“Hmm . . .” Fido twisted a toothpick between her lips. “So you think there was a fourth man?”
Rollick shrugged. “I don’t see how there couldn’t be. The fingerprints on the shotgun aren’t coming back with any matches, but they don’t match any of the three victims, either. I just don’t get why all three men were so close to the lake while the cabin burned. Seems like they would’ve retreated to the parking lot.”
“Holiday’s Land Rover was pretty much totaled. Reports have it crashing through Cherokee County shortly before the estimated time of death. Maybe the fourth man used it, then returned, set fire to the cabin, and killed everybody down by the river.”
“If that’s the case, he must’ve been here before. The Land Rover was with Holiday when he arrived here. Unless this guy stole it, we can conclude this fourth man was a friend.”
Fido plucked at her bottom lip with an index finger. “So then, maybe he didn’t set fire to the cabin. Maybe it was already burning when he got back.”
Rollick sighed. “I don’t know. We’re working with too little information. The bottom line is we drug our feet, and now our lead witness is dead.”
Rollick started back toward the pile of ashes and charring timbers that remained of Holiday’s lakeside cabin.
“What were you investigating him for anyway?”
Rollick kicked through the loose ashes of the burned-out home, toeing around for anything that survived the ravenous fire. “It’s classified. Nothing too exciting, though. Suspected smuggling out of the Brunswick port, and some other things. We approached Holiday about it six months ago, and he became jumpy almost immediately. Kept acting like we were poking around something much bigger than we thought. Hell, when we first talked to him, he wasn’t even a suspect.”
Fido tossed the toothpick into the dirt. “Guess it doesn’t matter what he is now.”
“I guess not. Look, we need to get the original DNA samples from local PD. I’m not satisfied with their analysis. I wanna run everything through D.C.”
“Have to get the new kid to do it. I’m being transferred to Charlotte.”
“You’re shitting me.”
Fido shook her head. “Nope. New assignment of some kind. They’re giving you a rookie fresh out of the Academy. Ex-Marine. I don’t know much about him, but at least he’s a blank slate. You can train him your way.”
Rollick spat into the ashes and ground his heel over the mess. From day one, this entire investigation felt cursed. Bureaucracy, red tape, repeated partner changes, missing witnesses, and dead ends plagued his every move. Things looked up when Holiday was recovered from a trailer outside of Atlanta after his violent kidnapping from FBI custody, but everything fell apart when the senator still refused to testify. Rollick’s next move would have been to formally charge Holiday with obstruction of justice, but he never got the chance.
“Does this kid know anything about homicide investigation?” Rollick asked.
Fido shrugged. “Ask him yourself. That’s him pulling up now.”
Rollick peered through the trees at a lifted black pickup truck winding its way up the curving drive. Heavy tint obscured the windows, and every inch of trim had been blacked out, making the whole vehicle as dark as night. The exhaust rumbled as the truck bounced to a stop next to Rollick’s agency-issued Impala, then the engine cut off.
“So long, Rollick. Good luck.” Fido tossed him a two-finger salute, then walked toward her car.
Soft grey ashes spilled over Rollick’s boots as he turned away from the parking lot and waded through the burned-out home. He knelt under what remained of the kitchen cabinets and sifted through the dirt and debris with his bare hands. A bent spoon, two glass beer bottles, and what appeared to be a double-A battery turned up, then Rollick’s fingers collided with something hard and cold.
Boots crunched through the debris behind him. Rollick could feel the tense, all-business attitude of the rookie investigator spilling into the atmosphere. Damn, he hated ex-military agents. Sure, they were disciplined, hardworking, and universally respectful of the rules, but they lacked the outside-the-box imagination that, in his opinion, made for an ideal investigator.
“Agent Rollick?”
The man behind him spoke with a thick Southern accent. Rollick glanced over his shoulder, squinting through the sun at the broad-shouldered, thick-jawed man ten feet away. Yeah, he looked like a Marine.
“Get over here, kid. Help me with this.” Rollick pried at the metal object, running his fingers around its smooth, round edge.
The big man knelt beside Rollick, and they began moving aside fallen timbers, chunks of foundation, and sections of metal roofing. After a few minutes, the object became more visible amid the ashes. It was a large Dutch oven, turned upside down with the handles burned off. Rollick sighed and kicked at it.
Another piece of shit.
The pot clicked against his foot, then rolled over, exposing a small rectangular object buried in more ashes beneath. Kneeling back down, Rollick scooped it up and blew the ashes off.
Score.
It was a cell phone. The screen was busted, with chunks of glass missing, and large cracks ripping through the remainder of the face. But the phone was still intact, and the best he could tell, untarnished by the flames.
Rollick stood up and handed the phone to his new partner. “Get this back to the lab. Have them run a full inventory of the hard drive. If they can recover the phone number, we’ll subpoena the carrier to provide us a full list of the most recent calls and text messages.”
The big man grinned. “Wow, that’s cool. I’m on it, sir.”
Rollick turned toward his car. “I’m not your sir. I’m your partner. You can call me Rollick—or just Roll. If you want to thrive in the FBI, you work hard and keep your ear to the ground. Whatever you learned in the Marine Corps, you’ll have to unlearn here. This isn’t the military. This is an investigative agency. Our job is to find the bad guys, then supply enough evidence to the prosecutor to charge them. Then we’re out. Understand?”
“Yeah. Got it.”
Rollick stopped beside his car, dug out a stick of gum, pressed it between his lips, then looked back. “You got a name?”
The big man offered his hand. When he spoke, his thick Southern drawl dominated every word, blending perfectly with his easygoing smile. “Rufus Turkman. Everybody calls me Turk.”
Rollick grunted and accepted the handshake. “Welcome to the FBI, Turk.”
Five
The hotel room was small and dark, with peeling wallpaper and the kind of lumpy mattress that made you wonder what deformed dragon slept inside. That said nothing of the mold growing in the shower stall or the unidentifiable stains on the carpet. Baxter looked even less thrilled with the accommodations than Reed felt, but neither one of them commented as Reed closed the door and sat down on the bed.
“Baxter. Beer me.”
The bulldog’s wrinkled, scalded skin was a patchwork of singed hair and crimson. He peered up at Reed through beady black eyes and snorted, spraying snot an
d slobber over the floor.
Reed laughed and unzipped the suitcase. “I’m only kidding. Here. Time for your medicine.”
Baxter dutifully climbed onto his dog bed, sitting silent and still as Reed massaged a medicated salve onto his wounds. When Reed’s fingers traced the burn marks and swollen scars that crisscrossed his pet’s back, Baxter would cringe, but he didn’t whine. He huddled against the bed until Reed was finished, then settled down.
“That’s a good boy,” Reed whispered. “You’re getting better already.”
The soft snores that rumbled from Baxter’s open mouth weren’t as smooth or peaceful as they used to be. There was pain in each labored breath, a landmark of the trauma the dog had experienced two weeks before when he was caught in the midst of the house fire. Reed studied Baxter’s slack lips, then scratched gently behind the bulldog’s ears. In a lot of ways, Baxter was his only friend, his only companion during the long nights and bloody days that characterized his existence in Atlanta.
“We’ll get them,” Reed said. “We’ll burn them the way they burned Kelly. I promise.”
A thick binder in the bottom of the suitcase was bent and dirty, packed with folded papers, wrinkled photographs, and two or three pens. Reed spread the contents across the bed and sorted through each item until he located a small notebook. He pulled a pen cap off with his teeth and sat cross-legged on the bed with the notebook. A list of names lined the faded yellow paper, each scrawled in his own spidery handwriting. Oliver Enfield’s name topped the list, with a thick red line scribed through it. The next name on the list was Cedric Muri. Reed scraped the pen across the name, obliterating it in an identical red line, then he tapped the third name. Salvador.
As far as Reed knew, Salvador didn’t have a last name or an alias. A man in Salvador’s line of work was certain to have multiple aliases, and for all Reed knew, Salvador itself was an alias. Whoever the unidentified South American truly was, he belonged on this list next to a kingpin killer and a thug dealer. Salvador was the man most directly connected with the shadowy organization who wanted Mitchell Holiday murdered. He hired Cedric Muri to supply henchmen for Oliver’s use in setting up Reed, and those same henchmen were responsible for kidnapping Banks and killing Kelly.